Volodates had his signalers trumpet the order to advance at all speed and, digging his heels into his mount, he sprang toward the Romans.
*
“There!” Megabocchus shouted, thrusting his javelin in the direction of the enemy riding across their path.
Publius saw the column at the same instant, horse archers and cataphracts led by an officer in robes of gold and blue over flashing silver fish-scale armor. His desire for confrontation was irresistible and he whipped his horse toward them as if he alone would be enough to defeat the column, leaving any orders for the formations behind him to Megabocchus and Censorinus.
The Parthians fired poorly aimed arrows in the direction of the Romans and then simply turned about and retreated in apparent terror and disarray. Over his shoulder, Publius called out to Megabocchus and Censorinus, “See? They fly before us!”
The retreating Parthians fired behind themselves impressively as they fled, arrows finding targets among the Celts, but in all other respects Publius saw panic. The fleeing horse archers rode over a dune and then another, the Romans slowly gaining on them. Riding over the crest of a third dune and arriving at a plain, Publius had cause to pull his horse to a rapid halt for these same Parthians he was giving chase to had turned to confront him, drawn up in perfect order, displaying no hysteria at all. Censorinus and Megabocchus arrived beside their prefect with the Celts close behind.
“This is where we fight,” said Publius.
Censorinus spoke with alarm. “First they run like rabbits and now they choose to stand? It’s a trick.”
“Bring the archers,” Publius commanded.
“The Parthians are beyond range, primor,” Megabocchus observed.
Across the expanse of sand, the Parthian horse archers appeared to act as one, notching arrows to bowstrings. They took aim and fired and a volley of missiles flew rapidly across the sky and descended on the Celts far behind Publius, his two companions and their arms bearers and attendants. A cry of wounded men and horses was heard immediately and Publius recognized his folly.
Compounding their dire situation, a force of 200 or more cataphracts and at least 1,000 more horse archers, accompanied by ammunition camels, appeared over the rise adjacent to the Romans, churning the sand and throwing skyward a cloud of the hateful dust that drifted gently toward them.
And on the far opposite dune there arrived many more numbers of Parthians, horse archers and cataphracts.
“We are surrounded!” said Censorinus. He scanned the horizon, his horse difficult to control, sensing the fear in the air.
“And if we are not, we soon will be,” Megabocchus added. “We must retreat, primor.”
“Retreat? Where to?” Publius replied. “Back to our lines? No. Here is where we fight our way through.”
The Celts arrived. Arrayed in their squadrons and decuriae, they immediately dispatched formations in a defensive ring around their prefect as the heavy dust drifted across the plain.
*
Volodates knew it would be slaughter and his feelings about it were mixed. The Romans would give them no quarter if the roles were reversed and the prize was nothing less than his homeland. Tactics had brought the Romans undone. Perhaps it was their national pride. If so, the men hidden in the boiling dust would pay for it with their lives, killed at arm’s length. There was nothing noble in it, but it was necessary. Volodates nodded at the standard bearer who raised his banner and waved it in the agreed manner. And then horns blew the command for the archers and the cataphracts to engage.
*
A thousand arrows flew at the Romans. But still they could not see their enemy, the dust obscuring all, and in parts so thick that they could barely see each other. And, lightly armored as they were, the arrows cut into them hard. Men fell by the dozen and then by the hundred as the volley of missiles became a blizzard of snapping, whistling, flying death, coming at them from all directions, unrelenting and merciless. Horses, too, died both fast and slow, their screams joining those of the men broken by the heavy shafts and iron heads. Wounded animals crazed and blinded by pain ran around in terror, trampling men who could not get out of the way, or collided with other animals, their screams pitiful as they lay with broken backs and shattered legs. Some took many arrows before they eventually dropped, holed and bloody. The men suffered equally as the arrowheads also flayed the flesh when the blow was glancing, so that many fell into a slop of their own viscera, gored and stripped from their bellies. Men who were terribly wounded, though not fatally so, yet stuck through with many arrows, chose to end their own misery and rolled on the broken shafts, pushing them into their organs. Some tried to pull the arrows out of them, an impossible task and one that only increased their pain. And still the arrows came from all around and at every height, the enemy’s supply seemingly inexhaustible.
Only lightly wounded in the arm by a glancing blow and protected by the gods, Publius strode through the dust with those who could still walk. “Rally, men! If we stay we die. Follow me!”
Some tried to stand, only to find a foot pierced through by an arrow and utterly nailed to the sand beneath. Others found their arms pinned to their sides, or their legs skewered together. Few were able to pull their gladius or draw a bowstring in their own defense, let alone go on the attack. And every second that passed in this dense fog, more joined those incapacitated by the deadly flights.
What remained of the cavalry rallied around Publius, Megabocchus having found the prefect a horse as yet miraculously unwounded. Publius leaped up on it. “This way!” he yelled, and chose to ride into the breeze in the belief that this would bring them to clear air sooner. Men and animals fell away from the charge but still Publius led from the front, choosing not to cower behind others. And within a short time, what remained of the cavalry rode into the clear, beyond the dust and the arrows. Facing them across the plain were the cataphracts, the enemy’s horse archers concentrating their fire on what was left of the Roman archers and light infantry. Publius drew his Celts up in line abreast. The prefect, not needing to exhort his men to feats of bravery with the dying cries of their kinsmen and comrades still fresh in their ears, turned his horse and, brandishing a lance high overhead, charged at the enemy.
Seeing the Romans thundering toward them, the cataphracts advanced also and the distance between them narrowed quickly. Close enough for his javelin to score a mortal blow, Publius sat up high on his mount and threw his pila with a shout, all his strength behind it. The weapon flew with speed and accuracy, striking a Parthian on the chest, but his armor merely deflected it harmlessly aside. Rows of Celts behind Publius also discharged their javelins at the enemy and again, few if any hit home. Publius jumped his horse moments before impact. The enemy’s javelin caught it in the chest, killing it instantly. Publius leaped from it as it tumbled, landing on his feet.
Running at the enemy, fearing not for his own life but of abject defeat, he leaped again at the nearest cataphract before the man could react and dragged him from his mount. The Parthian fell on his head, breaking his neck. All around him, horses and men screamed with their wounds. Many Roman horses and Celts were dying on the ends of the cataphracts’ lances. Those of Publius’s Celts who had seen what their prefect had done followed his example, leaping from their mounts and unhorsing their opposition, dragging them from their saddles or pulling on their lances and bringing them down in that way. Once on the sand, the cataphracts were helpless, lacking the lightly armored Roman’s mobility, and fell easy prey to the Roman spatha, the longer round-tipped cavalryman’s sword. Parthian horses also had their bellies ripped open by the more agile Celts and soon the sand ran with the blood and entrails of both Roman and Parthian.
But the numbers were far from even and soon, exhausted from heat and thirst, their wounded piling up, the Romans began to be overwhelmed. Publius himself had caught a javelin thrust in the shoulder, another in his ribs and thigh and his cuirass and tunic were black with his own blood. Also severely weakened with their own
wounds, Censorinus and Megabocchus took the prefect and retreated with him and the surviving remnants of the cavalry through the dust cloud now also hampering the enemy’s vision. They soon found their auxiliary archers and light infantry, most of them dead or dying, their bodies strewn across the desert along with many thousands of spent arrows. Publius and his companions gathered the men that could walk and headed for a rise in the desert plain, higher ground offering some small advantage, and perhaps the opportunity to signal the legions. But enemy archers brought their remorseless weapons to bear once more and soon the air was again thick with the deadly shafts, the last of Publius’s attack hemmed in from all sides. All around them men began falling to the ground. Arrows struck Megabocchus and Censorinus. And then an arrow struck Publius in his right shoulder, rendering his sword arm useless.
The three companions crawled together to the center of the rise, surrounded by the shattered remains of their force. Of the eight cohorts of light infantry, one and a half cohorts of archers, and 1,000 cavalry – numbers totalling around 6,500 men – barely 600 remained alive. No one was more aware of this disaster than Publius. Tears in his eyes, he turned to his companions. “This is my folly. All this,” he said, nodding at the bodies strewn around. “They led us to a trap. I followed without hesitation.”
Censorinus pulled himself to a sitting position. “We all rode with the same determination, primor.”
Megabocchus nodded, unable to speak with an arrow in his throat.
Publius turned to his arms bearer whose legs were shot through. “My spatha,” he said, unable to reach for the sword himself. The arms bearer drew it from the scabbard with some difficulty. “Set it for me.”
The slave was reluctant.
“Do it!” Publius insisted. The arms bearer dug a trough in the sand and jammed the pommel and handle into it so that blade pointed up into the air at a steep angle.
Censorinus, afraid for his friend, said, “Publius, don’t. Your father will send legionaries to support us.”
Publius dragged himself to the sword and set his chest against the tip, lining up his heart. “We rode out to save the legions. There’s no one to save us, Censorinus. I destroyed the army’s sole strike weapon. I have left it defenseless. All I can do now is prevent the shame of capture from further staining my family’s name.”
Censorinus’s dust-caked face was streaked with tears. Megabocchus pulled himself through the sand to sit with his companions. Publius took their hands. “You have been the best of friends. I will see you both at the Ferryman’s boat.”
“You will,” Censorinus told him, drawing his own spatha.
Publius gave Megabocchus and Censorinus a final grin and fell on his sword, the blade passing through his heart and exiting his back.
VIII
Spāhbed Surenas and Volodates rode onto on the plain and surveyed the death and carnage, the dust cloud having dissipated. Dismounted horse archers were moving among the dead and dying, killing those whose wounds would eventually end their lives, and sparing those who would live to be sold, fetching tetradrachms at the Babylon slave markets.
“You have done well, Captain,” Surenas told him.
“I merely executed your wise strategy, Lord,” Volodates replied.
“Our enemies here were heavily outnumbered and their arrows could not fly as far as ours.”
“Yes, Lord.”
Surenas climbed off his horse and kneeled beside three blood-soaked Romans who had taken their own lives, impaled on their swords. “These were brave men.”
“They fought to the end.”
“The finesse of their armor suggests they are the commanding officers,” said Surenas.
“Lord, a delegation comes.”
Surenas turned and saw a large group of Arab riders, accompanied by cataphracts, heading toward them. When the men were near, their leader removed the shroud covering his nose and mouth and revealed his identity. Surenas grinned broadly and exclaimed, “Abgar, your timing is impeccable as always!”
Abgar bowed deeply atop his horse and made the usual gestures of fealty. “My lord has won a great battle! Your supremacy will echo through the ages!”
“If I should win such acclaim, the credit will be yours also for delivering the enemy to my feet.”
“I am merely the servant of your will … I see you have found him.” He indicated the man slumped rigidly on his sword.
“Found who?”
“Oh, you do not know? The man who stated that his intentions regarding Parthia would be delivered to you on the streets of Seleucia – the Proconsul Crassus. That man there at your feet is the proconsul’s son, Publius Licinius Crassus.”
*
Two more cataphracts charged toward Rufinius’s point in the line.
“Hold …” Rufinius called out. “Hold …”
There had been a welcome cessation in the deadly fusillade of arrows accompanying such charges, which the legionaries attributed to Publius Licinius Crassus, who had led his Celts out to meet the enemy with several thousands of light infantry and archers and was no doubt teaching the Arabs a lesson they would not soon forget. The lack of incoming arrows came as a relief to the men and it had allowed them to devise a strategy for negating the deadly charge of the heavily armored horsemen.
“Now!” yelled Rufinius. The men braced against their shields as the galloping silver beasts crashed into them, which initially blunted the attack. The spaces between the men and their shields then opened briefly so that horse and rider seemed to break through, only to close again tighter than ever around the enemy. A well placed slice to the animal’s belly followed by an equally targeted sword to the cataphract’s unprotected back and the melee was over. And then all that remained was to strip the Parthian man and horse of their armor for use over their own shields, which then afforded ample protection against the rain of deadly shafts.
“They’re not learning their lessons, primor,” Carbo shouted over the cheers of the men.
Rufinius grinned at the legionary and called, “Scuta!” in preparation for the inevitable retaliation that would rain down on them. But it didn’t come. Instead, from far down the line, rose a wail from their fellow legionaries that sounded like a mass lament.
“What in Jupiter’s ball sack is that?” wondered Libo, speaking for Rufinius and the men around him.
The noise coming from the ranks was a collective groan and hiss, the kind of sound the losing faction might give at the Circus when their champion had been put to the sword. The wail was accompanied by a lull in the attacks from the Parthians and Rufinius was as puzzled about it as the next man. But then, partly obscured by the dust cloud, came a large formation of cataphracts trotting toward them, beyond the range of Roman javelins. The groan and hiss grew louder as the Parthian formation drew closer, but the spectacle still made no sense to Rufinius until it passed his cohort. And when he saw, his heart sank and his voice joined those around him as he hissed.
*
Within the defensive square at the army’s praetorium, Crassus awaited news of Publius. He had taken advantage of the apparent lull in Parthian attacks to dine in private on various salted meats and dried fruits, washed down with several cups of watered wine, slaves cooling the air with fans. He admired the fine craftsmanship of the golden goblet in his hand, its handles resembling serpents and with a finely worked emblem of a blazing sun on its side, a prize from some forgotten Zoroastrian temple in an equally forgotten Parthian city long since sacked. The food and the wine were working their magic and Crassus felt in remarkable spirits, his confidence returning. Beyond this battle, and with victory behind him, Babylon and even Seleucia lay before him like supine strumpets, legs open. There was nothing to be concerned about. He licked a drop of wine from his lower lip, aware of his cock swelling. Enthusiastic reports had told of the Parthians fleeing before his son’s attack like rabbits chased by hunting dogs, the fortunes of the battle turning as fast as the Parthians had given flight.
A voice ca
lled him outside the tent. “Proconsul.” It was Legate Longinus.
“What?” replied Crassus.
“There is a disturbance in our lines. We should investigate first hand.”
Crassus stood and went out into the dust and heat. Cassius Longinus was not alone but accompanied by several legates and more than a dozen of their staff officers, grooms standing by with horses. It seemed a delegation of sorts. None except the legate would look him in the face. “What do you mean … disturbance?”
“I care not for rumor, Proconsul. I must see with mine own eyes.”
“See what? What rumor?”
But Legate Cassius Longinus would not or could not elaborate further and the party rode with all haste to the lines where a hiss of anger and displeasure was rising from the men. Crassus and his legate got down from their mounts and rushed to the fore, legionaries protecting their commanders with shields newly armored with Parthian steel scales.
The cataphracts drew adjacent to Crassus, their mounts cantering proudly. After thirty or so of these came the Parthian officers, one in particular dressed in blue and gold robes over sparkling silver armor. Crassus felt his knees threaten to give way beneath him and horror filled every cavity of his being. The Parthian in the blue robes carried a golden lance. On the tip of the lance sat the head of his son, Publius, his neck severed clean.
A hush fell on the legionaries surrounding their supreme commander, as much in sympathy as in expectation. What would their leader do?
“Proconsul …” said Cassius Longinus, a hand on the father’s shoulder.
Crassus shrugged it off, his body trembling with fury. “Romans!” he shouted into the silence. “This is one father’s tragedy! It is mine and mine alone. Only I should bear its burden. But I have many more sons. They are you, men of Rome! You are my sons, too. And to you I say run forward now and attack this insolence, avenge this killing. By this one act, showing the head of Publius, these barbarians mean to dispirit you. Show them your rage! Show them what my sons can do! Charge at them! Show them your steel!”
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